Hi,
Am forwarding a request for help from a researcher, David Feeney, from
Ireland , Trinity College who is working on a research paper about
travel and blindness.
Thought that this list is definitely the place to go. Am enclosing his
questions. He can be contacted at the following email address
lime119@xxxxxxxxxxx
Regards,
Lisa
A relatively recent recruit to the interdisciplinary task of exploring
various aspects of the experience of blindness, I am currently
struggling with a paper on the acquaintance of blind people with the
delights of travel. Although I am interested in the role played by
tactile maps in this experience, my paper takes its starting point as
that juncture when orientation is no longer in doubt, and the blind
wayfinder is free to savour the aesthetic gratification afforded by
his/her passage from place to place. I address the following questions
to members of the blind community, but would be equally grateful if
they, or people familiar with their experience, would take the time to
suggest ways in which some of the following questions might be addressed
in relation to the experience of voyaging:
· How would you describe the relation between navigation and aesthetic
appreciation?
· The process of ‘psychical distancing’ might be described, in the
context of travel, as the willed abstraction of the element of danger
from conditions of low or impeded vision, in order to dispel anxiety and
induce a savouring of the poignant enjoyment of the very act of making
one’s way in such treacherous conditions. Is it facile to suggest that
this phenomenon might feature in your experience of travel? Do you
suspect that his question may be more pertinent to those with some trace
of vision? How is the balance between the emotions of excitement and
trepidation experienced while travelling through unfamiliar territory?
In what ways does a map dictate this balance?
· Have you ever availed of a ‘pre-visit pack’? In what way, and to what
extent does being primed or prepared for an encounter with certain
geographical or architectural features enhance or diminish your
aesthetic enjoyment of the experience?
· Which do you find more enjoyable - the maiden visit or the ‘revisit’?
How would you describe the relation of ‘sense memory/memories’ to the
enjoyment afforded by the latter? In what way does the act of revisiting
help you to ‘update your file’ on places you have been before?
· Do you harbour a conception of the distinction between ‘potential
reach’ and ‘actual reach’, and of the process of travel as a purposeful
action to transform the former into the latter? What do you make of the
type of allure held, for example by a distant mountain range in the case
of the sighted traveller? Do you think that a tactile map fortifies your
understanding of this phenomenon?
· What are the main aesthetic qualities of the maps themselves? Do they
have the capacity to incite wanderlust? Do you think, for example, that
the texture and curvature of the map adds an element of immediacy to
your speculations about the proposed trip, in contrast to the relative
remoteness from the mapped territory in question felt by the sighted
traveller during the preliminary stages of an excursion?
· What are the chief differences between travelling alone with a map,
and travelling with a companion? How significant is the difference
between travelling with a sighted and blind companion?
· What degree of influence do the conditions exert over your journey?
Does rain, for example, or a stormy passage, give you a keener sense of
your surroundings than still weather?
· What kind of data do you usually return from a journey with? What are
the chief ways in which this data differs from the information the map
had yielded before you set out on the journey?
· By what kind of features do you typically identify places?
· To what extent is the joy of arrival commensurate with the effort
expended getting to your destination? What does a map contribute to the
joy (rather than mere fact) of arrival?
· How would you describe the difference between the respective values of
place-names and places to the pastime of travel?